Metonymy
by Nyah
Summary: A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left.


**Disclaimer**: Don't own it, don't know the people who do, hope they don't know me either

**Summary:** _A__ wise__ girl__ kisses__ but__ doesn't __love, __listens __but __doesn't __believe,__ and__ leaves __before__ she __is__ left._(LJ comment ficathon prompt)

**Rating:** R for language

**Pairings:** Caroline/Various

**Metonymy**

Damon makes you kind of grateful to Seth Weinberg. When you say 'kinda' you mean like so embarrassingly glad that you seriously consider sending him a 'thank you' note on Facebook. Just for a second.

You blame Billy Joel for Seth. The winter your dad left he packed up careful boxes with all his stuff. Meticulous as always, he got it all, he didn't leave bits of his life in dusty corners or at the bottom of the silverware drawer. So you're sure he noticed when you swiped the CD from the stand in the living room. And it's signed and like his favorite or whatever so he was probably not thrilled about leaving it. But. Fuck him, right?

When he was gone, your home was a quilt with half the patches ripped out. You wrapped yourself up and played Billy's greatest hits on repeat, shivering right on through to spring nights.

That spring, you were class president and totally embarrassed to have to ask Seth to be on the student diversity panel on the merits of being nominally Jewish and the son of a Democrat. But that's Mystic Falls for you and Seth wasn't offended so he got it. He got that inviting him to coffee as a thank you was really an invitation to invite you out again. He got that the best thing to do in Mystic Falls was drive at night with the top down. And, yeah, he got that only the good die young. And, yeah, that's what did it probably. _Whatever._

What he didn't get was how the first time was supposed to be special for a girl and completely about her. He didn't get that there should be music and candles and love. So it made it a lot harder to pretend you weren't just trying to get it over with. You were sixteen and starting to understand you might be beautiful. But your dad was gone and last week Elena's parents died and you were starting to understand how hard the world tried to break perfect things.

You were numb in a drunk kind of way and there was a boy who couldn't think past getting you naked. So you did it and you cried later when he left. But, guiltily, you felt a weight lift. You'd succeeded in giving away one more perfect thing.

So, for a while Matt feels like karma for how wise you had become. Or something. He's the guy you were supposed notice joyfully, regretfully, at 35 after a few failed marriages and a kid or two on both sides. Because, at 17, the boy next door is supposed to feel like settling and supposed to make a girl feel stifled and smothered and like she'll never leave this town.

But instead it's … God, you're afraid of the word_ perfect_. One day soon you'll think back to yourself standing in front of your bedroom mirror, trying on tomorrow's outfit for school, grinning because you'll see him in History. And you still won't be able to come up with a better word for the memory of that refection. Except maybe _doomed._

Sometimes, then, you still regretted Seth and how he might have been Matt. Sometimes. Right up until you wake up in the hospital with Damon's rose-colored memories peeling off like paint, like the bleeding, sticky strands of a chrysalis. And fuck it if that's a tired metaphor and vampires aren't at all like butterflies Other things hatch too.

You think of maggots and flies and clutch at your stomach like your insides are collapsing. All the old hurts are stronger but this newly old betrayal squirms in your guts. When you kill that man you know it's your own fault and you know you have to be better. But you kind of want to grab Damon by the throat and ask him if he gets that you could lay it on him, that his blood is blindly crawling through you, tearing open toxic memories, growing fat on rage.

He'd say he did it to save your life. The life he never respected when you had it. But it would be within your rights to lay the dead man at his feet. He who planted rape with perfect memories, who turned you into a thing that has no choice but to break Matt's healing heart.

Tyler is when you stop trying for normal; when you figure if you take the missing pieces from the wrong puzzles and manage to fit them together it's a victory even if the picture never comes clear. And it's enough of a mess to work for a while and never would have worked if your lives were still whole enough to bother trying for something that made more sense.

It's slow then it's fast and it's secret then it's not. And eventually not even Matt minds. And there are a thousand reasons it can't last for long so when you hold him you're happy enough but already ready for the hemorrhage of one more perfect thing.

When it happens, when Klaus and Rebekkah come tearing through everything you've won, you're still there with him. Too fast and too slow, arms wide in friendship, heart already out the door. You have Damon to thank for that and your Dad and Seth Weinberg too.

While Tyler's off chasing Klaus you spend some time surprised you didn't cling to Katherine. If Damon is the maggots and the cocoon, Katherine is the one who ripped it open. If Damon is your mutinous father, Katherine is the mother who made you stand on your own and accepted all the blame. Forgiveness blooms in your heart like betrayal and you understand, a little better, why Tyler loves Klaus and hates the moon.

Senior year is built of broken hearts and boys you don't take to meet your mother. It's Elena and Bonnie crying over the phone while Stefan trusts you and texts you his secrets. Damon leaves you out of the loop less now because you haven't exactly turned off the part of you that's human but you lie better than anyone else.

Your friends become the people you call to bury bodies. Once, your circle was all sex and sleepovers but you're done swapping relationships like second-hand clothes. So you date a few boys at the Catholic school and fill out your college applications. When Katherine turns up again, you consider the blades of her fingers and the curve of her mouth and you think about adding new experiences to your resume.

It sounds exactly like the sort of bad idea you don't have anymore. But you wake each other up searching for clothes and hasty exits. It's an hour before dawn and she shakes her head over a sly smile. You think you're probably the only person she's never left behind.

Years from then, in an airport bar you'll slide onto a stool next to Seth Weinberg. Like almost no one you knew back then, he'll look exactly as old as he should, thick hair shot with silver, wrinkles starting at the seams. "Hello Caroline," he'll say without surprise, smiling gently.

You'll notice then that you've never quite forgiven him for your first time back when you were still really hoping life might surprise you by being better than you expected. You'll tell him that, talking too much like you haven't done in years. Not about anything real, anyway.

"I hear you can help," you'll say, curious rather than hopeful and by now completely used to how many people are nothing like normal.

He'll tell you to take your time because the way back is not easier. So you'll follow him around for a year watching him work, waiting to want to remain untouchable. But at the end of the year you'll hold out your hand for him to touch and your heart will start to beat again. The maggots in your guts will only eat away the dead parts. Your hair will blanch at the roots and your skin will gently crinkle. In the mirror you'll have aged gracefully but you won't look new like your heart's too light to ache.

You'll stop wearing make up and start teaching yoga at the senior center. You'll write memoirs you'll never publish and keep all your wisdom on the tip of your tongue. Katherine will drop by one day and you'll invite her in. You have nothing to lose. She'll see your wedding photos on the wall and ask about Seth and what he can do to help. She'll turn that sly grin on you, still impressed at how you've left her behind. If she goes back now, she knows she'll be nothing but dust. You're alive and old enough to know there's not a finite amount of perfection to be had; even when you lose everything, it comes sneaking back in.


End file.
